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Saturday, April 30, 2011

PORTLAND, Maine -- A Maine cabinet member who was forced out after offending rural residents, African-Americans and Native Americans all in one day said Friday that some of the comments attributed to him were misconstrued and others he didn't even say.

Two days after leaving his post as commissioner of the Department of Economic and Community Development, Philip Congdon said the allegations against him are false and that much has been made over nothing. He blamed politics and a state representative who wrote a letter to Maine's governor about his talk earlier this month in northern Maine.

(Reuters) - Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi survived a NATO airstrike on Saturday night that killed his youngest son Saif al-Arab and three of his grandchildren, a Libyan government spokesman said.

Mussa Ibrahim said Saif al-Arab was a civilian and a student who had studied in Germany. He was 29 years old.

Libyan officials took journalists to the house, which had been hit by at least three missiles. The roof had completely caved in in some areas, leaving strings of reinforcing steel hanging down among chunks of concrete.

A table football machine stood outside in the garden of the house, which was in a wealthy residential area of Tripoli.

CHICAGO -- Near the end of a two-day summit here that brought together mayors and federal officials to talk about city design, the mood turned confrontational.

It started when Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, in the middle of a Friday discussion on the federal government's role in city development, turned toward the Washington officials who were sitting with him on stage and expressed his disappointment.

"Mayors could never get away with the kind of nonsense that goes on in Washington," he said. "In our world, you either picked up the trash or you didn’t. You either moved an abandoned car or you didn’t. You either filled a pothole or you didn’t. That’s what we do every day. And we know how to get this stuff done.”

In taking aim at Medicare, these conservative members of Congress are claiming that they are actually “saving Medicare” from financial ruin and that there is no possible choice other than to privatize the program and throw seniors to the insurance industry. They say this to justify a plan that the Congressional Budget Office says would have the elderly spending the majority of their income on health care.

Yet what Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) — the architect of the plan to end Medicare — and other right-wingers don’t want you to know is that there are actually numerous way to shore up the fiscal solvency of Medicare that wouldn’t involve such a dangerous privatization scheme.

ThinkProgress has assembled three different policy options that, if enacted, could help Medicare’s future financial issues and save the taxpayer billions of dollars:

Conservative firebrand and former Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo hasn't had particularly kind words for President Barack Obama. Last October, for instance, he said that the president wasa greater threat to the country than Al Qaeda.

And he's long questioned where the president was actually born. When Michelle Obama described Kenya as her husband's "home country" in a speech in 2008, the anti-immigrant Tancredo responded, "If his wife says Kenya is his homeland, why don't we just send him back?"

Video clips on conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart's Big Government website show professor Judy Ancel seemingly endorsing violence as a union tactic during a recent class. UMKC Provost Gail Hackett pledged support for the academic freedom of the school's professors and said videos posted on Breitbart's site rely on "selective editing" and are presented in "an inaccurate and distorted manner."

INDIANAPOLIS -- Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels plans to sign a bill that will restrict abortions and make Indiana the first state to cut off all government funding for Planned Parenthood.

The move is likely to beef up his credentials among social conservatives as he considers a 2012 presidential run.

Daniels said Friday that he's supported the abortion restrictions from the outset and the provision added to defund Planned Parenthood didn't change his mind. Daniels says women's health, family planning and other services will remain available.

The move puts at risk $4 million a year in federal family planning grants likely to be cut off because of the bill. The legislation also would ban would abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy unless there's a substantial threat to the woman's life or health.

Stolen credit card information from the Sony PlayStation Network may be circulating the web, according toThe New York Times.Security researchers have discovered discussions on hacker forums that suggest as many as 2.2 million credit card numbers, as well as names, addresses, usernames and passwords, could be stored in a database. Some hackers have even said they are trying to sell the list for $100,000 or more.

This land is still your land, pretty much the way it was for most Americans in 1940 when Woody Guthrie immortalized the gamut of the United States, from California to the New York Island and all the redwood forests, diamond deserts, wheat fields and golden valleys in between.

Of the 50 most populated cities in the United States, New York remains the city where it's better to rent than buy. The Big Apple's competition? Fort Worth, Texas.

That's according to the recently released Q2 2011 Rent vs. Buy Index by Trulia, an online real estate resource. The site compares rent of a two-bedroom apartment with median list price of a home to create price-to-rent ratio. Using that ratio, they divide cities into three groups: (1) cities where it is beneficial to buy a home; (2) cities where the choice should be made on a case-by-case basis; and (3) places where renting is much less expensive.

TRIPOLI, April 30 (Reuters) - Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi struck a conciliatory note on Saturday, saying he was ready for a ceasefire and negotiations provided NATO "stop its planes".

In a live speech on Libyan television that began in the early hours of Saturday morning and lasted 80 minutes, Gaddafi said he did not intend to step down or leave the country and that Libyans could solve their own problems if NATO strikes end.

According to the L.A. Times, Amazon has slashed big-sellers like Katy Perry's "E.T.", Jennifer Lopez's "On the Floor" and Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" from 89 cents to 69 cents. Apple sells the same singles on iTunes for $1.29.

This move by Amazon strikes at Apple's tiered pricing system, which maintains a 99-cent price tag for most songs and ups the price of popular tracks. As noted by MacRumors, if you find a 69-cent song on iTunes, it's typically "older back catalog material" instead of a current chart-topper.

While the Amazon's new deal may entice buyers, it's unlikely that we'll see iTunes prices change, given that Apple commands 69 percent of the digital download market.

The next time you're gritting your teeth as you fill your tank with $4 gas, here's something to consider: Your pain is their gain.

The last of the Big Five oil companies announcedfirst-quarter earnings Friday, so the totals are in. Between the five of them, ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips made $34 billion in profits in the first three months of 2011 -- up 42 percent from a year ago.

That's about $110 for every man, woman, and child in the United States -- in just three months.

Conservative members of Congress have beenfeeling the heatall over the country, as a Main Street Movement of everyday Americans have been protesting their efforts to cut crucial services and public investment, including their vote to effectively end Medicare.

Yesterday, a group of citizens from a local activist group calling itself “Organize Now” protested outside a town hall being held by Rep. Dan Webster (R-FL), who faced a rowdy crowd at a town hall this week. The activists dressed as zombies and demanded that right-wing politicians stop gutting social programs and force them to “work ’till they die”:

Outside of a few regular occurrences, sports and politics generally don’t mix. Elected officials sometimes toss out the first pitch of a baseball game, make friendly wagers with other elected officials, and attend iconic sporting events, like the Army-Navy football game or the World Series. And, of course, there are the obligatory visits to the White House by various sporting champions.

But sports figures, particularly well-known sports figures, tend to stay out of the partisan political spotlight. After all, both Democrats and Republicans like sports, so delving into partisan political debates is generally a recipe for disaster. But this week, Texas Tech football coach Tommy Tuberville didn’t just plunge himself into a partisan political debate — he dove headlong into the biggest debunked conspiracy theory in American politics, coming out on Fox News host Sean Hannity’s show as a birther:

As ThinkProgress has been reporting, conservative members of Congress are facing a backlash across the country as Main Street Americans, outraged by a GOP budget that effectively ends Medicare, speak out.

At a town hall earlier this week in Montana, Rep. Danny Rehberg (R-MT) began comparing the plight of every day middle class Americans like those at his town hall with his own economic circumstance. He droned on about how he’s ‘struggling’ as a small businessman. A constituent asked him what his own net worth is and he said he’s “land rich and cash poor”:

Friday, April 29, 2011

This morning, Politico hosted a star-studded Playbook Breakfast event with the Creative Coalition, an political advocacy organization for the entertainment industry. During the question and answer period, we asked actress Rosario Dawson about the Republican budget plan, which cuts the corporate tax rate and taxes for millionaires. Dawson, who clarified that she is not a formal member of the Creative Coalition, curtly responded that “no,” celebrities do not need another tax cut. Dawson then followed up and noted that immigrants pay more in taxes than ExxonMobil:

Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX) held a “listening session” at Burns Elementary School on Tuesday where he discussed a variety of issues with a crowd of nearly two dozen constituents. One of the attendees uploaded video of the session on YouTube.

At one point during the session, a man asked about drug testing for “welfare recipients.” Farenthold said that this is an idea worth considering, and then went on to complain that unemployment insurance is too generous. He then compared Americans on unemployment insurance to alcoholics and drug addicts:

The bright future of 16-year-old Kabiru Adewunmi was tragically snuffed out Tuesday night, as he was killed walking with friends to a convenience store on Chicago's South Side.

Adewunmi, an optimistic, intelligent teen born in Nigeria, had played for the Chicago Fire's 17-and-under soccer league, where he attracted the attention of Division I scouts from around the country, the Chicago Tribune reports. His coach, Sole Antonijevic, told the Tribune that he could well have been destined for a career in the pros.

But on the night of his death, Adewunmi was celebrating a different sport. The Chicago Bulls had just eliminated the Indiana Pacers in the NBA playoffs, advancing to the conference semifinals. Adewunmi and his friends were celebrating that winaround 9:30 on Tuesday when they were attacked, according to CBS.

The incident appeared to be gang-related, although Adewunmi had just moved to the neighborhood and had no connection to gangs.

Two and a half years after first being bailed out by the federal government, insurance giant AIG has officially begun to place blame on companies it alleges profited at AIG's expense.

In a new lawsuit, AIG is seeking to recoup "potentially billions of dollars" from Wall Street giants, including Bank of America and Goldman Sachs, according to The New York Times. As part of that larger effort, AIG is first seeking $350 million from ICP Asset Management and some of the accompanying profits from Moore Capital.

Researchers at the University of Michigan have made a scientific discovery that is intriguing all on its own but it is the breakthrough’s potential applications insolar power generation that have them excited.

According to Stephen Rand, a professor at the university and author of the paper that discusses his team’s discovery in the “Journal of Applied Physics”, the researchers found a way to make an “optical battery” which harnesses the magnetic attributes in light that, until now, scientists didn’t think amounted to much of anything.

NEW YORK — Democratic strategists close to President Barack Obama have launched an outside fundraising group to support his re-election, financed in part by the kind of large, undisclosed contributions the president has criticized.

Former White House aides Bill Burton and Sean Sweeney said Friday that the group, called Priorities USA, will battle the "extremist, right-wing" efforts of Republican-leaning independent groups who spent millions to defeat Democrats in the 2010 midterm elections. The group's goal is to raise $100 million for what is certain to be the most expensive election in history.

On Tuesday at a town hall in Sycamore City, IL, freshmen Rep. Randy Hultgren (R-IL) was asked about the nearly $4 billion in taxpayer subsidies Big Oil companies receive every year, which the House GOP recently voted to preserve. A well-informed man in the audience asked Hultgren why he had done nothing to cut the subsidies, in light of the high national debt. The constituent noted that the billions in cuts forced by the GOP in the FY 2011 budget deal from valuable programs like Pell Grants and FEMA is about equivalent to the amount of money given to incredibly profitable oil companies. Hultgren hemmed and hawed before finally saying he would “look into that”:

Throughout human history, the climate system has been a source of life and death, the sun and rain capable of feeding our crops and bringing us comfort, or unleashing terrible devastation in wind, fire, drought, storm, and flood. Each tragedy that occurs — such as the terrible outbreak of tornadoes and flooding storms this week in the South — reminds us of that awesome power, which is beyond our control and at the limits of our comprehension. We have also learned that humanity is meddling with that power, primarily through the burning of coal and oil that increases the amount of heat trapped in the atmosphere and oceans. Scientists have been warning our leaders for decades that this interference with the climate system is dangerous, and have worked tirelessly to explain how these threats are now coming to pass.

However, the Republican Party is now dominated by ideologues who deny the threat of polluting our climate, even when faced with direct evidence of what the climate system can do to the people they are sworn to protect.

Conservatives attack any discussion of climate policy within the context of the killer tornadoes as “grotesque,” saying that to do so is blaming the victims.

In an email interview with ThinkProgress, Dr. Kevin Trenberth, one of the world’s top climate scientists, who has been exploring for years how greenhouse pollution influences extreme weather, said he believes that it is “irresponsible not to mention climate change” in the context of these extreme tornadoes, adding that the scientific understanding of how polluting our atmosphere with billions of tons of greenhouse gases affects tornadic activity is still ongoing:

Freshman Rep. Rick Crawford (R-AR) became the latest Republican to face the ire of his own constituents for voting for the Medicare-ending GOP budget when he was repeatedly challenged by attendees at a town hall meeting in Jonesboro, AR last night. At his first town hallsince being seated, Crawford had attendees write their questions on index cards and then read them out loud, “but a handful of audience members weren’t satisfied andshouted at Crawford from their seats.”

While Republicans have insisted that their budget saves Medicare, Crawford veered off message at one point, responding to the question “why are you going to end Medicare as we know it?” by saying, “the answer to that is because Medicare as we know is bankrupt.”

Later, Crawford faced a heated question about why the GOP budget cuts taxes for the wealthy and corporations while slashing social services. Crawford replied, “I don’t support tax cuts for the wealthy over help for socio-economically challenged individuals.” A number of his constituents repeatedly challenged him on this claim, accusing Crawford of “class warfare against the poor people” and explaining that tax cuts don’tcreatejobs. Crawford apparently did not appreciate this, and ended the session:

Oklahoma state Rep. Sally Kern (R), who said this week that “blacks” don’t work as hard as white people, will not be admonished by the Oklahoma House’s GOP leadership. Kern issued a written apology claiming she “misspoke” when she said during a 10-minute floor speech on Wednesday that African Americans and women don’t work as hard as whites or men because they’re dependent on the government and men, respectively.

The NAACP says that’s not enough, calling on Kern to resign. “You cannot commit racism and then offer an apology for the racist statement that you make,” Anthony Douglas, the president of the Oklahoma NAACP, said. “The citizens of Oklahoma, the constituents, can no longer stand by and allow this type of action to happen.”

But apparently the leadership of the Oklahoma House of Representatives is willing to stand by Kern, the Tulsa World reports:

ROME — Archaeologists say they have found the upper side of an ancient ship near Rome.

The wooden ship was about 11 meters (36 feet) long, making it one of the largest ancient vessels excavated near Ostia Antica, a port city founded some 2,500 years ago and Rome's first colony.

Ostia archaeology official Anna Maria Moretti said Thursday the discovery is important above all because it indicates the coastline during ancient Roman days was some 3-4 kilometers (2-2.5 miles) farther inland than it is now.

The remains of the ship, missing its bow and stern, were found 4 meters (13 feet) underground during repairs of a bridge linking modern-day Ostia to Fiumicino, the town that hosts Rome's Leonardo da Vinci airport.

WASHINGTON -- The nation's top nuclear regulator cast doubt Thursday on whether reactors in the U.S. are prepared for the type of days-long power outage that struck a nuclear power plant in Japan.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has only required plants in this country to cope without power for four to eight hours. After that time, it assumes some electrical power will be restored.

NRC chairman Gregory Jaczko on Thursday questioned whether four to eight hours is enough time, even though it's unlikely a nuclear power plant would lose power from both the grid and emergency diesel generators as the Japan plant did. Requirements put in place after the September 11 terrorist attacks could lengthen plants' ability to withstand a blackout.

BERLIN — German police on Friday arrested three suspected members of the al-Qaida terrorist organization who officials say posed a "concrete and imminent danger" to the nation.

Authorities did not say whether the three had planned specific targets and offered few details, but security officials said that all three suspects were of Moroccan origin. They also said that two were arrested were in the western German city of Duesseldorf and one in nearby Bochum. The arrests were based on suspicion they were planning a terror attack, they said.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) admitted on Monday that the federal government is in serious need of extra revenue. But since taking control of the House in January, Republican lawmakers have scuttled proposals that could reap billions in added government revenue by better policing tax evasion, saying government tax collectors should make better use of existing resources in this era of fiscal constraint.

The U.S. government loses around $300 billion in revenue each year because of tax cheats, some of whom hide their earnings in offshore accounts or disguise them using complicated business structures, according to the Internal Revenue Service. Since 2001, tax evasion has cost as much as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush tax cuts and the 2009 stimulus combined, according to the financial-services analysis firm The Motley Fool.

Gathered in this brief are a range of things attesting to the senior Obama's youthful shadiness, including a whiff of polygamy and the fact that his University of Hawaii student advisor noted that he was chasing a lot of tail at college and "cautioned him about his playboy ways." It's implied that the former charge was briefly considered "as a grounds to deny him a visa extension;" the latter basically describes almost every man you ever met at college.

Chalk up yet another accolade for the iPhone 4. Though Apple's latest phone may have gotten off to a rocky start with the antennagate debacle, market research firm NPD is now reporting that the iPhone 4is the best-selling device -- this includes both smartphones and feature phones -- in the U.S., according to Q1 numbers.

iPhone 4 sales, boosted by the February launch on Verizon, drove Apple to become the third most-popular phone manufacturer, coming in behind Samsung and LG. The top 5 are:

Android still dominates on the OS side, though Google's mobile operating system lost marketshare for the first time since 2009 and Apple moved up 9 points to 28 percent. RIM had a rough quarter, losing 5 percent, which puts the BlackBerry OS on only 14 percent of smartphones.

Also, for the first time ever, smartphone sales have outstripped feature phones, with smartphones making up 54 percent of all new phones purchased in the U.S.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) demanded on Thursday that regulators impose limits on oil speculation to help lower the price of gas in a letter sent to President Obama.

“There is mounting evidence that the skyrocketing price of gas and oil has nothing to do with the fundamentals of supply and demand, and has everything to do with Wall Street firms that are artificially jacking up the price of oil in the energy futures markets,” Sanders wrote. “In other words, the same Wall Street speculators that caused the worst financial crisis since the 1930s through their greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior are ripping off the American people again by gambling that the price of oil and gas will continue to go up.”

WASHINGTON -- A divided federal appeals court has ruled that opponents of taxpayer-funded stem cell research are not likely to succeed in a lawsuit to stop it.

In a 2-1 decision Friday, the panel of the U.S. court of appeals in Washington overturned a judge's order that would have blocked taxpayer funding for stem cell research.

The panel reversed an opinion last August by U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, who said the research likely violates the law against federal funding of embryo destruction.

The 1996 law prohibits the use of taxpayer dollars in work that harms an embryo, so private money has been used to cull batches of the cells. Those batches can reproduce in lab dishes indefinitely, and the Obama administration issued rules permitting taxpayer dollars to be used in work on them.

The GOP-led House’s passage of a 2012 budget — engineered by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) — has laid the Republicans’ values out in the open for all to see: Strip huge amounts of funding from Medicare, Medicaid, and other programs aimed at supporting middle- and lower-income Americans, all to balance the budget (depending on whose numbers you believe) while keeping taxes on the wealthy at unprecedented lows.

Now that Republican representatives have returned to their districts for the congressional recess, everyday Americans at town hall meetings across the country are reacting with outrage at the perverse priorities of the Ryan budget. And this latestmanifestation of the burgeoning Main Street Movement against the right’s economic agenda has only grown in intensity since both ThinkProgress (and even some mainstream media outlets) began reporting on the phenomenon.

Watch a compilation video of some highlights from town halls across the country over the past week:

Now, a video posted on YouTube shows that Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-MI) came face to face with this movement during a listening session at Montague High School in Montague, Michigan. Constituents challenged Huizenga about why is he targeting Medicare and other social programs but resisting raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans, who are facing the lowest tax rates in a generation.

One attendee asked when the country was going to start trying to “trickle up” instead of following failed “trickle down” policies. Later, a frustrated constituent stood up and told Huizenga that his party has been completely captured by the richest Americans, to applause from the audience:

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Since he crashed down from Krypton 1938, Superman has been as American as apple pie. With the wind rippling over his red, white and blue costume as he flew through the air, through comic books, TV shows and movies, the Man of Steel has served as a prime representation of all things to which America aspires.

Now, in a time of great international turmoil, Superman is giving up his national identity.

In "Action Comics #900," Superman will renounce his American citizenship, rejecting the international notion that his actions are part of US policy. The shift comes after a personal visit to Iran in support of protestors leads Ahmadinejad to believe America was declaring war against the government in Tehran.

WASHINGTON -- The release of President Barack Obama's long-form birth certificate Wednesday took many observers by surprise. Many pundits questioned the timing and the political wisdom of the announcement, a sentiment White House Communications Director Dan Pfieffer seemed to confirm. He suggest to reporters at that morning's press briefing that it might have been in the president's "long-term political interests to allow this birther debate to dominate discussion in the Republican Party for months to come."

But that may not have been the case. The most recent public polling on the issue shows that, overall, doubts about Obama's birth had been growing glacially at best, and not at all among independents. While the vast majority of Obama supporters and swing voters give the "birther" theories little credence, the controversy sharply divides Republicans. Moreover, even though release of Obama's long-form birth certificate is dramatic and unparalleled, it is unlikely to make a significant dent in any of these attitudes.

Here are five key findings from public polling that help put the "birther" issue into perspective:

Potential GOP candidate Donald Trump has been peddling false and malicious attacks on President Obama. He gains much of his prominence from his prime-time NBC show The Apprentice. This morning at 9:30 am on Twitter, ThinkProgress urged concerned citizens to ask Groupon to stop sponsoring the show.

Dozens of massive tornadoes tore a town-flattening streak across the South, killing at least 250 people in six states and forcing rescuers to carry some survivors out on makeshift stretchers of splintered debris. Two of Alabama’s major cities were among the places devastated by the deadliest twister outbreak in nearly 40 years.

“Given that global warming is unequivocal,” climate scientist Kevin Trenberth cautioned the American Meteorological Society in January of this year, “the null hypothesis should be that all weather events are affected by global warming rather than the inane statements along the lines of ‘of course we cannot attribute any particular weather event to global warming.’”

The congressional delegations of these states — Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, Virginia, and Kentucky — overwhelmingly voted to reject the science that polluting the climate is dangerous. They are deliberately ignoring the warnings from scientists.

One such congressman is Rep. Daniel Webster (R-FL). ThinkProgress spoke with Webster prior to hisraucous town hall meeting yesterday and asked him about whether he’d like to see oil subsidies ended, as House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) initially called for and then later backtracked. Webster was unequivocal in his support for ending subsidies to oil companies, saying that further cutting “any kind of corporate welfare is on the table”:

Yesterday during his press conference in New Hampshire –- after the cable news networks cut to President Obama’s remarks regarding the release of his long form birth certificate — potential GOP presidential candiate Donald Trump spent some time extolling infrastructure investments made by China and other countries, suggesting the U.S. should follow suit. This prompted Les Trent, a reporter for Inside Edition, to ask Trump: “Isn’t that what President Obama tried to do with his stimulus package?”

Trump’s response to Trent, who is African American, was “Look, I know you are a big Obama fan.” Trent replied, “Why do you say that?”

The Federal Reserve's purchases of more than $2 trillion in mortgage and U.S. government debt may cause an upswing in unemployment, a top regional Fed official argued Thursday in a new paper that counters the central bank's position.

The forecast by Yi Wen, an assistant vice president and economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, challenges a chorus of pro-purchase research published by the Fed's Board of Governors in Washington and its regional banks in San Francisco and Boston.

Black patrons at the 4Play nightclub in Buffalo, New York this past Saturday are alleging that they were kicked out because there were “too many Black people” in the venue.

At 11 p.m., security and the club manager were reportedly overheard by both white and Black residents saying that they needed to throw out some Black people to whiten up the club.

While the alleged discriminatory words were not caught on camera, a professional videographer was on the scene and caught the reactions of many African Americans; including a white resident who backed the claim that the club owner did say he wanted “black people out.”

“I was on the patio and I heard the club owner say those exact words and I couldn’t believe it,” said Giovanni Centurione.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke held the first public press conference in the history of the Federal Reserve yesterday, in an attempt to bring more transparency to the central bank (which faced its first ever auditlast year). "I've personally always been a believer in providing as much information as you can," Bernanke told the gathered press. The conference was held just hours after the Federal Reserve Board announced that it will end its program of quantitative easing (QE2) -- aimed at boosting the sluggish economy -- on schedule in June, due to its assessment that "the economic recovery is proceeding at a moderate pace and overall conditions in the labor market are improving gradually." However, at the same time, the Fed revised its projections for economic growth downward. Previously, the Fed had estimated that growth this year would be between 3.4 and 3.9 percent, but now it is only predicting growth at 3.1 to 3.3 percent, due to contractions in exports, construction spending and military spending. The Bureau of Economic Analysis announced today that first quarter growth registered at just 1.8 percent. And while most of the questions during the conference centered on Bernanke's views on inflation, gas prices, and the nation's deficit, little time was spent on arguably the most pressing problem facing the country: continued high unemployment.

Last winter, Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) instigated a massive movement of Main Street Americans when he advocated for and passed a new budget law that severely restricted the labor rights of most public employees in the state.

Last night, Massachusetts took a step in that direction when the state House of Representatives voted 111-42 for a bill that would essentially strip public workers of their collective bargaining rights to negotiate for health insurance plans. Under the proposed law, unions would be allowed to negotiate with local officials for 30 days, but officials could still unilaterally impose changes in health insurance coverage if negotiations fail to reach an agreement. The text of the legislationspells this out:

As Republicans across the country face a backlashfrom voters in their home in their districts for supporting the Medicare-ending GOP budget, Florida Rep. Allen West (R) has attempted to squash protesters and avoid tough questions at his town halls. In Ft. Lauderdale Tuesday, West only answered pre-screened questions that were read aloud by a staffer. In Boca Raton last night, protesters were removed from the town hall before it began.

But the preventive measures didn’t stop West from having to defend his vote last night, telling attendees that those who are fighting to save Medicare as we know it are putting the United States on a path toward destruction:

President George W. Bush stepped away from the ranch yesterday to “opine on the issues of the day” with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. First up, a lesson on Texas tea. Bush suggested Americans try to “understand how supply and demand works” and realize that offshore drilling is key solution to rising gas prices. “If you restrict supplies of crude, the price of oil is going to go up and it affects gasoline,” he said.

But, in what is becomingan unfortunate pattern for the ex-president, his own former administration official disagrees. Doug Holtz-Eakin, the White House’s Chief Economistunder Bush, joined MSNBC’s Chris Matthews Tuesday to discuss the problem of rising gas prices. When asked whether the conservative “dig, drill” mantra would actually lead to lower gas prices, Holtz-Eakin — who was also the cheif economic adviser for Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) 2008 presidential campaign — offered a simple answer: “no“:

Like many Republicans, freshman Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-TN) campaigned for office last year on a promise to repeal health reform. He accused his Democratic opponent, Rep. Lincoln Davis (D-TN), of attempting a “smoke-and-mirrors ploy to implementsocialized medicine.” And once joining Congress, DesJarlais voted to repeal the entire bill.

However, only four months into office, DesJarlais’ office appears to be touting a successful health reform program. According to the Crossvile Chronicle, a representative from DesJarlais’ district office was on hand last week for a groundbreaking ceremony to hand over nearly $4.5 million in grant money — entirely funded by the Affordable Care Act — for the construction of a community health clinic in Cumberland County, Tennessee. Gregg Ridley, a staffer for DesJarlais, even posed for a photo-op with a gaint ceremonial check to local officials to take credit for making the grant possible. View a screenshot below:

After the 2009′s Citizens United ruling that allowed corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money in American elections, corporations were able to play an unprecedented role in 2010 election cycle. In the wake of the decision, many corporations set up front groups that allowed them to donate large sums of money to candidates without having to disclose information regarding their contributors.

Now, in Tennessee, lawmakers are trying to replicate the corporate takeover of the federal government by lifting the state’s own ban on direct corporate contributions and raising the amount of money PACs can contribute. The bill was sponsored by three Republican legislators and was approved by committees in both the House and Senate on party-line votes. The Knoxville News-Sentinel reports:

By Isabel Reynolds and Reiji Murai
TOKYO | Thu Apr 28, 2011 6:48am EDT
(Reuters) - Japanese consumer electronics giant Panasonic Corp said it would cut another 17,000 jobs and close up to 70 factories around the world over the next two years in a bid to pare costs and keep up with Asian rivals.

The maker of Viera TVs and Lumix cameras said it was aiming to trim its workforce of 367,000 at the end of last month to 350,000 by March 2013. The cull comes on top of nearly 18,000 job cuts made in the past business year, for a total of around 35,000 over three years.

"The figure is huge, but so is the company, and for an old-fashioned one like Panasonic, this is a big move," said Toru Hashizume, chief investment officer at Stats Investment Management in Tokyo.

Panasonic set aside 110 billion yen ($1.3 billion) in restructuring expenses for the current financial year.

Company President Fumio Ohtsubo said Panasonic had about 350 manufacturing bases around the world and would look to merge operations where it could.

Yesterday, President Barack Obama allowed the world to see his "long-form birth certificate," proving something that was already widely known, but not accepted in some dank, idiotic circles: that he was born in the United States. And so, this great controversy has finally been put to rest. Ha, just kidding! It will do nothing of the sort, actually. Did you think that Pestilence is going to pull up short on his steed to tell the other Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse, "Yo, man, I'm out. I think that penicillin makes a lot of good points."

No, no. Implacable Birtherism and all of its attendant annoyances will roll on, in some cases evolving, but never dying off. The only question is: In trying to kill it, do you make it stronger?

RABAT, Morocco — A massive terrorist bombing ripped through a cafe popular among tourists in the heart of the Moroccan city of Marrakech on Thursday, killing 14 people including foreigners and wounding 20, the government spokesman said.

The blast in the iconic Djemma el-Fna square was Morocco's deadliest attack in eight years.

Government spokesman Khalid Naciri said it was too soon to say who was behind what he called a terrorist attack, although, he noted, Morocco regularly dismantles cells linked to al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.

Naciri said that he "cannot be specific until investigators have drawn conclusions."

MINNEAPOLIS -- The NFL is falling behind in its court fight with the players over the future of the $9 billion business.

The federal judge who lifted the NFL lockout two days ago dealt another blow to the league late Wednesday, denying its request to put her ruling on hold pending appeals and guaranteeing more limbo for the 32 teams, thousands of players and millions of fans.

U.S. District Judge Susan Richard Nelson wrote that the NFL "has not met its burden for a stay pending appeal, expedited or otherwise." She dismissed the NFL's argument that she didn't have jurisdiction and that it is facing irreparable harm because of her decision to end the 45-day lockout.

NEW YORK -- Public and private funds have flooded all manner of experimental education programs, from charter schools to Race to the Top initiatives.

But as America tries to ensure its children have a fighting chance in the 21st century, resources have been slow to come to one sector in particular: school-aged youth charged with criminal offenses.

Particularly in New York, one of three states in the country that charges children as adults by age 16 (rather than 17 or 18, as elsewhere), the issue of juvenile justice reform is particularly pressing. Roughly 400 students aged 15 and younger pass through the city’s juvenile justice programs daily, according to Timothy Lisante, the state's deputy superintendent for alternative, adult and continuing education. He further estimates that every day, 800 16- to 21 year-olds pass through the state’s educational programs at the prison complex on Rikers Island.

(Reuters) - Verizon Wireless was scrambling on Wednesday to resolve an outage of its highest-speed U.S. wireless network, on which the top U.S. cellular carrier is relying to drive future growth.

The venture of Verizon Communications (VZ.N) and Vodafone (VOD.L) announced on its Twitter feed that its newest network -- based on Long Term Evolution, a high-speed data technology -- suffered an outage that held up data-transfer flows on some devices.

The operator said that while voice calls were working on the Thunderbolt, an HTC Corp (2498.TW) device that is Verizon's first LTE-enabled phone, data speeds on that phone may slow.

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Simple man, who likes simple things. Who seems to meet some simple people and I don't mean the good simple either. Still, it's fun to meet people who can relate to things behind the wall of the internet. "Sometimes it's best not to see a face only to feel a heart."